


And Your Thoughts They Rewind

by bkgrl



Series: I'm Not Calling You a Liar [4]
Category: The Originals (TV), Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:32:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1355926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bkgrl/pseuds/bkgrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1348- Bulgaria. Niklaus keeps a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Your Thoughts They Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing!
> 
> Check out incyal.tumblr.com for all the fun things. Story can also be found on ffnet under the same name. More details posted in the series summary!

_I come back to haunt you,_  
 _Memories will taunt you,_  
 _And I will try to love you,_  
 _It's not like I'm above you_

_**~ Haunt, Bastille** _

* * *

  **The Bulgarian States**

**1348 AD**

As he walked through the streets of Serres, bodies spilled over carts, laying in piles in the gutters. What few people where left (the brave ones) wandered the streets, keeping dirty rags over their mouths. Afraid they'd catch it as well.

In the thousand plus years Niklaus would live, never would he see anything like it. The Spanish Influenza, Plague of London, The Third Pandemic, none of them would be anything like the Black Death. People would look at him as he passed, unafraid, not cowering as he ducked in infested alleyways, digging through rotting bodies.

It had taken him a hundred and seventy eight years but he had prevailed. Hannah was wrong that day when she told him, he'd never find them. Her children, no, they lived full lives, unscathed by his presence. But their children's, children, had not been as fortunate. He'd tracked her descendants from Venice to Hungry, Bosnia and now the Bulgarian States. Following his last clue, he'd hunted down what little was left of her fledgling line to Serres.

He found a man peddling a death cart, cloaked in black, who looked at Niklaus strangely when he asked for directions that would lead him further into the crowded city.

"There's nothing but death south of here."

"And north as well," he answered, "How much further is it?"

The friar looked at him, before finally answering, "Past that row, right over there. The woman you ask for," he shook his head to signal she was most likely dead.

"And children? Does she have any?"

"момче." (A boy)

Turning to leave, he was stopped by a hand on his arm. Fumbling through layers of heavy wool, he retrieved his rosary.

"Let me bless you before you go. You walk into death, my child."

Impatient but not willing to draw suspicion he nodded as the friar prayed, "Със своята свята защита.В името на Отца, Сина, Светия Дух." (With his holy protection. In the name of the father, the son, the holy ghost)

It was her, he should be praying for. Leaving the man behind, Niklaus weaved through the dilapidated homes until he came to the one, the friar had pointed out. Pots, utensils, clothing, belongings were strewn everywhere between houses, looters digging through the homes of the dead before they too would flee.

Peering inside, the small stone structure had no door, most likely used for kindling to light the bodies they burned in the streets. What he could see was a bed with someone laying inside and next to it a child.

Looking up from the dirt, he eyed, Niklaus, "She's still alive," he begged.

"Shh…" he answered from the home's threshold, "I have not come to take her," just kill her, he thought.

"Niklaus," the body whispered, "invite him in, Niklaus."

The little boy looked to his mother, dirty cheeks stained with tears. Following her instructions, he nodded his head, giving him the permission he sought. Slowly entering, he watched as the boy, moved in closer to his mother, protective, grasping the clammy hand with black nails that reached for him.

"Niklaus," she soothed, her fingers touching they young boy's face.

"Не плачи бебе," (Don't cry baby) she murmured, "I'll be fine soon enough."

He couldn't have been more than six, maybe seven but the boy wasn't stupid. He knew she was near death. If he didn't have eyes, he could have heard it in her labored breaths. If he was deaf he could have smelled the flesh decaying, falling from the bone.

"Run along, Niklaus. Give your mother a moment."

Reluctantly, the boy looked to their guest then back to his mother.

"Go, just a few moments, promise." Leaning into her touch, he kissed her hand, before obeying, leaving the little stone home.

When she could hear him no longer, she questioned, "Have you come to take me?"

He'd intended to quickly snap her neck then follow the boy. But as he leaned over the bed, infested with flees, ticks, covered in ratted blankets he looked down and saw the face of a ghost one hundred and seventy eight years past.

"Hannah?" He questioned, before he could stop himself from saying that cursed name.

It was the same black hair. Only this time it was straight, matted back in a fevered sweat. The same blue eyes peered up at him, framed in dark circles. Her skin had lost all color, now completely ashen, her lips already turning a faint color of blue. Death would come for her soon.

"No... Anne," she replied, a weak smile wrinkling at her lips.

He'd seen every child that had been born from Hannah's line. Every girl, save those first two generations and although there was some small semblance of a similarity, never had he seen anything like this. It was the same face, the same voice, giving a creature that feared nothing, chills.

"Have you come to take me?" She asked again.

Take her? At that moment, he wished to leave immediately and never look back. Had his hallucinations resurfaced all these years later? The faint feeling he'd had the day that old woman, Hannah, had died, putting the ghost of her youth to rest, that small nagging feeling that something was wrong, missing, gone, perhaps forgotten, something important… it was back. Over the years, with each child he'd killed, with each girl he'd seen take her last breath, he'd felt some miniscule sense of relief, almost causing the feeling to dissipate all together.

But now, it was back. More present than it had been in years, stronger than he'd ever felt it.

"Niklaus," the ghosts of his hallucinations whispered in his ears.

"No," tumbled out of his mouth, more in response to his own memories than her question. Rotted, sweaty hands reached up to him, "красив," (beautiful) she commented unashamedly.

He didn't shy from her reach, but he didn't accept it either. Part of him worried engaging the apparition, possibly drawing himself back into another hell.

In fever, hovering at the precipice of death, he looked heavily, as if from the stories her mother used to tell her or possibly one of the saints to which she'd prayed to, so many times in vain.

"Вие сте ангел?" (Are you an angel). Her fingers brushed the back of his hand. "Ангел на милосърдието," (angel of mercy) she continued.

Coughing filled up the silence as she finished, "Молих се, че ще дойдеш." (I prayed you would come)

Fingers latched on to his knuckles, drawing him to sit down beside her.

"I knew, if I continued to pray, someday you would come."

The humans and their obsessions with gods, in the past four hundred years, the new god, the messiah, they called him. Catholicism had swept across Europe, bringing with it a whole new wave of ignorance, suspicion and foolish superstitions.

"I'm not an angel, Anne."

"Of course you are. The father sent you to me."

He was ready to snatch his hand back and show her what her prayers had brought her. When she rasped, "Keep him safe," followed by a heavy coughing spell, blood spewing from her lips, droplets lading in the blankets around her.

A fool, she'd be better to give her son instead, to the devil they cursed. His hand reached down to wrap around her neck, when unexpectedly she moved into his touch instead of squirming away in fear.

"Promise me, angel," she demanded.

"Should you not ask to live instead?"

Again, she gave him that same strange smile, "No…." And like as if she knew, as if she had been aware all along of whom he was, an angel, but one of death, she closed her eyes, whispering, "I'm ready," so softly that if he were still human he wouldn't have heard it, the warmth draining from her face and neck.

Niklaus never killed Anne as he had intended, the Black Death beat him to it. And although he'd got what he came for, somehow it wasn't as satisfying as all the others had been. Mayhaps it was because it wasn't him controlling her last breaths, squeezing life from her body.

Or perhaps it was something else. But instead of victory all he felt was that nagging feeling, hovering over him, taking up every inch of space in the room.

It seemed wrong, like something had been stolen from him. She would never say his name. She never knew who he really was. Taking from him the thing he'd cherished most: power. To Anne, he'd always be benevolent, as she died in peace.

Of all his victims, even Hannah, he had never lingered after they were gone to give them more than a moment's thought. But with Anne, he stayed, minutes, an hour, after her passing, until her entire body had gone cold.

And when he rose to leave, he did something else he'd never done before. Seeing a piece of crude parchment, a terribly scrawled letter, addressed to Anne, he picked it up, taking it with him.

What that letter said was insignificant. Anne had never read it alive, being unable to read, but had kept it just the same, just as Niklaus would keep it without reason or logic for the next nine hundred years.

Leaving the decrepit home, he never searched for Niklaus, the little boy. He never killed him as he had all the others. The boy would eventually succumb to the plague just as his mother had.

But in Niklaus's mind, by not killing the boy himself, he'd kept maybe the only promise he'd never given.


End file.
